Blogging the 2007 Wisconsin Film Fest: Prologue

The Wisconsin Film Festival is one of those events in Madison that attracts online attention like little else in town. Every year during the two weeks that bookend the event, there is a flurry of previews, reviews, reports and photos from many of the movies that screen at the fest. The 2007 edition is no different.

Blogging in anticipation of this year's festival follows below.

A pair of local movie fans volunteering for the festival are sharing their behind-the-scenes plans for the weekend:

Sara Ziemendorf explains that the volunteer program will motivate her to participate in the festival. She elaborates upon getting involved:

So I volunteered and spent two orientation sessions with about 100 others learning about the whys and hows of ticketing, cueing the projectionist, introducing the show and possibly the filmmaker, and creating a decent line. Jealous yet? My theater is going to run like a clock!

This is the fourth year of volunteering for another festival-goer. "I'm scheduled to put in twenty hours," she notes, " in addition to our viewing four movies."

Then there are the online previews of various elements of the festival:

John Benninghouse previews seven music-related films programmed for the festival.

Shortly after tickets went on sale, Dane101 covered the rapidity with which festival-goers grabbed tickets to several films.

Mikelanne Northrup and Erika Grace of the area code zine published an interview with Leslie Hall (of Leslie and the Ly's) on Dane101 in advance of the gem-sweater sensation's gig at the first official festival party at Café Montmartre on Friday night.

A Capital Newspapers blogger interviewed student filmmaker Andrew Napier about his documentary Keeping the Spirit (programmed in the Wisconsin's Own series), also noting the increase in reel-to-reel screenings at this year's festival.

As someone who has attended all the previous film festivals, the one piece of advice I can give is to give yourself the freedom to be blindsided by a film," writes Rob Thomas from The Capital Times in an inaugural blog entry abut the fest.

Finally, there are those persons simply planning or pondering the movies they will be seeing over the weekend:

Madison soccer scribe Eric Anderson notes the Sunday screening of Zidane, an abstract documentary focusing upon the charismatic French legend of the beautiful game.

There's one prospective festival-goer who describes the difficulties of scheduling films in the midst of a busy weekend.

"I also love the Wisconsin Film Fest, except that most years I love it in theory only," explains another, largely due to problems in the past with procuring tickets. That's no problem this year, though, as the cinephile lists the movies he will be seeing over the weekend.

More blogging about the 2007 Wisconsin Film Festival can be found in Madison Miscellany. If you have any online writing or photos from the fest, please send a message.